In our prior episode, I was headed almost a mile downhill — that’s a mile of elevation — toward Paradise Valley and some days off from traveling.

Not so much days off, though. I was in the 48th state (the last of the lower 48) to be admitted to the Union) for the last week of October and into November so there were yard sales, parties, decorations, electioneering, road construction, and it all lead to an excitement-filled day at the Arizona State Fair where, of course, I ate something on a stick. I took very few photos, though.

The freezer didn’t like the desert heat so my first job was to experimented with a big floor fan. That worked a treat so I bought two 12v fans. They didn’t move enough air, so I put a 110 volt fan and an inverter on the shopping list.

On the other hand, I got to watch the street get torn up. SWMBO likes to point out that it is impossible to drive anywhere without hitting road construction. I’m pretty sure that, for example, the Florida Department of Transportation is bidding a four-lane highway with a 40-foot median across Puffin Island.

I went to a great yard sale the other day. There was sports memorabilia, lots of electronics, and tools, guy stuff. A huge 60 inch flat screen TV caught my eye with a price tag on $50 on it!
“You only want $50 for this big TV? It must have something wrong with it,” I said.
“It works great,” Livvy said, “except when you turn it on the volume goes up stays all the way up.”
“Man, I sure can’t turn that deal down!”

Our friend Livvy came into town to join some high school buddies for a road trip of their own. Sadly, her husband had passed away before she arrived — she found him in the living room surrounded by quail — and she ended up having to deal with his collections of collections.

Note to self: start your own inventory now.

Homer had bought stuff. Lots of stuff. He had amplitudes of amplifiers, cartons of clothing, loads of light bulbs, a mountain of microwaves, piles of ‘puters, stacks of speakers, volumes of VCRs, a DeWalt 12″ sliding compound miter saw that I would have loved to own, a 9″ electric fan that I do, and too much more to list. The quail weren’t for sale.

Livvy invited a bunch of friends over to help her identify and organize the goods and get ready for a yard sale to end all yard sales. As an incentive, we got first crack at the goodies. Fortunately, I had enough room in the truck for a computer monitor, brand new in the box, two VCRs, a tile cutter, a dozen rolls of ScotTissue, and the great find, a power inverter and the 9″ electric fan that I needed for the freezer.

That didn’t make a dent in the inventory, though, so Livvy is still having sales.

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We went to a party where I got spend the evening catching up with Mardelle, a Burner friend.

She wants to come back as a weatherman in her next life. OK, weatherperson. I spend a bit of time every day reading the radar and moisture charts and tracking Fronts and pressure gradients. “Where else can you be wrong all the time and still keep your job?” Mardelle asked. I think I actually do better than 60-40.

Halloween decorations took center stage as well. I wonder how one finds enough time between seasons to switch from ghosts and goblins to Yule logs and mangers?

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State fairs are usually an annual recreational and competitive get together to promote state agriculture and they continue to exhibit livestock. The first U.S. state fair was held in Syracuse, NY, in 1841; the New York State Fair has been held annually ever since.

The Arizona State Fair was a territory fair before Arizona was a state. Early on, the entertainment was horse, pony and mule races, with exhibits of farming, home economics, and cattle filled the grounds. With over one million visitors in the month of October, it is now one of the top five state fairs in the world.

I had a rabbit as a kid, so the rabbit warren drew me in. I never knew there were so many different types of the family Leporidae. More even than chickens. There were American, American Fuzzy Lop, American Polish, Argent Brun, Champagne, Cinnamon, Dutch, Dwarf Hotot, English Lop, Flemish Giant, Florida White, French Lop, Harlequin, Havana, Himalayan, Holland Lop, Jersey Woolley, Lion Head, Mini Satin, Mini Rex, Mini Lop, Netherland Dwarf, New Zealand, Rex, Satin, and Tan bunnies. Some divisions like “Rex” have as many as 18 classes, divided by color and fur. And we saw chickens. Lots of chickens. There are 12 divisions of chickens with as many as 53 classes including the famed Transylvanian Naked Neck.

I had to come back to South Puffin, though, before I met a turkey inseminator.

We rode the 130-foot tall La Grande Wheel, the largest transportable Ferris Wheel in the world but skipped the dinosaur adventure of Jurassic Trail. Purdue put on The Edible Journey, an K-4 interactive exhibit to identify what a farm is and what farmers do and to understand the role of science in food production. Stage of the Arts hosted demonstrations by working artists and photographers. We skipped Rock U, the Institute of Rock ‘N’ Roll, because we have been to the M.I.M. The ladies wanted to visit the Shopping Pavilion (formerly the “Commercial Building”) so we saw everything from boots to books, cookware to collectibles, mops to mattresses and pillows to purses.

And, of course, we had $8 ice cream and food on a stick. I’m still surprised by the dairy industry in the desert.

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In bad news, I lost my driver’s license in Albuquerque. In good news, I made that amazing discovery in the comfort of a private home, not while a sworn officer was waiting for me to produce ID.

I spent a while tracing my steps and determined it could be in only two or three establishments. I Googled their phone numbers and called. Not at the gas station. Not at the restaurant. Not at the motel.

Oh, wait. The motel called back. “We found it!” the daytime desk clerk said. She promised to mail it to me.

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In more bad news, my absentee ballot wasn’t waiting for me when I arrived in Arizona.

My voicemail includes a transcription service. This is what they sent me. “Hi this is Blazing Goalie-at(?) chairman of the [Mumble-something] Political Party of Florida with a friendly reminder to please return your vote by mail ballot as soon as possible. This election May be the most important erection of our lifetime and we need all [Mumble-something] vote is counted. Again please return your (?) male ballot as soon as possible. If you have any questions about your ballot please contact your local [Mumble-something] party or your County supervisor of elections. Paid for by the [Mumble-something] Party of Florida. Not authorized by any candidate or candidates committee.”

That’s easier to figure out than many messages have been and was a great reminder to look for the darned ballot.

I did find out why my ballot hadn’t arrived. The Monroe County Supervisor of Elections tracker website says “Ballot 1 was sent Thursday, October 13,” to my South Puffin post office box. Apparently writing the address where I was visiting in my fine engineering hand wasn’t enough. OK, it was in Microsoft Technical typeface. Anyway, it defaulted to my home address. I called them, resent the ballot request, and then called again. I waited and waited and it did get here before I had to leave.

I can’t believe the USPS has a substation in an Ace Hardware but the clerk said her magic mystery screen promised delivery by Friday, November 4, so I paid her $1.15 and left my ballot with her.

I never did talk to any of the robo calling candidates and, while my ballot made it to Florida on time, my drivers’ license never arrived in Arizona.

THE CUBBIES WON THE WORLD SERIES FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE 1908!

The inverter didn’t seem to be working but I figured it out in daylight. It has not only a switch on the inverter but also a black one on the black 12V “cigarette lighter” plug. Hard to see in the dark. I attached the inverter to the battery box and tested it; it’s noisy but it runs the 110V fan perfectly and that keeps the freezer cold.

In the usual story of this trip, I packed up to leave before Veteran’s Day. Once each year, at 11:11 a.m. on 11-11, the sun shines perfectly on this memorial. I left Arizona behind before it happened. Here‘s the story.

On the next leg, I’ll retrace some of my steps to stop at the Mogollon Rim, look for my license, and make sure I have my colonoscopy results handy.

 

I’ve made a new friend who was kind enough to let me couch surf and to show me the sights. And had a number of firsts.

In our prior episode, after a short night’s sleep in Albuquerque, I was up and off to Grants, NM.

I visited New Mexico’s Land of Fire and Ice and found the Sands Motel off Route 66 in Grants, New Mexico, but didn’t have to stay there. I also drove past the Ice Cave and told the story of my great-grandfather and my grandmother cutting ice on Westtown Lake in wintertime. They stored it in our 10-sided ice house.

All that’s left of the Roaring 20’s (sic) is the sign.

Grants is on the Trails of the Ancients Byway, one of the designated New Mexico Scenic Byways, and right on old 66. The city began life as a railroad camp when the Canadian Grant brothers built a section of the Great Atlantic and Pacific Railroad there. At night you can fall asleep to the lullaby of freight trains rolling through. It has also been the “carrot capital” of the United States, was an airway beacon, and the uranium capitol after Paddy Martinez discovered the ore near Haystack Mesa; the mining boom lasted until the 1980s.

I saw my first saguaro of this trip.

The beacon and FSS building on the airport is now the Western New Mexico Aviation Heritage Museum. It includes two 1929 historic structures, the lighted 51-foot airway beacon tower and a small building with one of the two original generators, plus the concrete arrow which helped daytime aviators follow the direction to the next beacon. The renovated 1953 Flight Service Station is the main exhibit hall.

We went to the airport museum and got a private tour and then I drove a dirt track for the first time at the Uranium Capitol Speedway. I also ate Stuffed Sopapillas for the first time in La Cafecita.

Then the white truck made its first trip across the Continental Divide. It was, in a way, an anti-climax. The truck didn’t seem to notice the thinning air and my gas mileage stayed about the same as it was at 6,000 feet. And 4,000.

Low-octane fuel — rated 85 or 86 as opposed to the 87 for regular gasoline — is common in the Rocky Mountain states, said General Motors fuel specialist Bill Studzinski. The practice goes back to the days of carbureted engines, when lower octane helped vehicles run smoothly at altitude. The electronic engine controls that have replaced carburetors make the lower octane unnecessary and potentially harmful. EPA states that these “newer vehicles can adjust the spark timing to reduce knock, but engine power and fuel economy will still suffer.”

El Morro National Monument sits on an ancient east-west trail in western New Mexico. Its primary attractions are the graffiti-laced sandstone promontory with a pool of water at its base and the remains of a mesa-top pueblo top the promontory where some 1,500 people lived in an 875 room pueblo from about 1275-1350 AD. Travelers left signatures, names, dates, and stories of their quests. The conquistadors called it The Headland (El Morro). The Zuni call it “A’ts’ina” (place of writings on the rock). Americans called it Inscription Rock.

“Pasa por aqui,” wrote provincial governor Don Juan de Onate in 1605 (“passed by here.”) His very early inscription partially covers one of the prehistoric American Indian petroglyphs also carved on the rock. Twelve-year-old Sallie Fox traveled through by wagon train; she wrote her proper name, Sarah, in 1858.

E. Pen Long of Baltimore came through El Morro with the Beale Expedition of 1859 bringing 25 camels in a short-lived Army experiment. He signed with this flowing, perfect, script. And one T. Post signed over top of that in 1872. We haven’t chased down how he’s related to my friend Bob.

Typical El Morro visitors:
 

We also stopped at the Ancient Way Cafe where I had a Buffalo burger for the first time with homemade potato salad served on a split top bun with leaf lettuce, tomato, onion, pickle, cheddar and a real milkshake. They also let me plug in my truck.

I’m carrying a 12V/110V freezer on this trip so I plug in to run the compressor and recharge the house batteries whenever I can.

We walked across El Malpais lava flows to get to the Bat Cave. The youngest flow is McCarty’s Flow, some 3,000 years old on the east side of the monument. The Chain of Craters cinders come in at 600-700,000 years. Mount Taylor and its flows, up to the northeast of Grants, are 1.5-3.3 million years old. During the summer, tens of thousands of Brazilian free-tailed bats use Bat Cave, a lava “tube,” as their day roost. They emerge for their nightly feedings. I’m quite pleased to report that I saw no mosquitoes.

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My folks “moved” to Gallup, New Mexico, for hurricane season a few years ago. New Mexico rarely has hurricanes, so they were actually escaping the South Puffin weather. My mom wanted to paint “on the Res.” Right on Route 66, the town catered to travelers but now is all Pawn and Trading Post. My folks rented an apartment for several months.

The downtown Gallup Amtrak train station sits right on Highway 66; it is the second busiest station in the state, with more than 16,000 passengers per year. The two-story Mission Revival building was built as one of the Santa Fe railroad hotels in 1918. It is now also the home of the Gallup Cultural Center operated by the Southwest Indian Foundation.

I started my visit through the center’s Storyteller Museum and Gallery to see the exhibits of Kachina dolls, weaving, sandpainting, silversmithing, jewelry, pottery, and other pieces by Acoma, Zuni, Navajo, Hopi, and other artisans.

Wayne Wilson was there to show his son the museum. We talked about the Navajo and Hopi Kachina dolls. Wayne explained baskets and the cradleboard story and introduced me to Navajo Beautyway Teachings/Dine’ Bi Hozhoji Beh Na’nitin.

The Navajo Ceremonial or Wedding basket’s step designs are clouds or mountains, Wayne told me, that are reflected in the center. The red ring is a rainbow, and the center represents the sipapu, where the people emerged from the prior world, born through the inner coils of white. As you travel outward on the coils you begin to encounter more and more darkness, struggle and pain but you can climb into the rainbow and prevail. The wedding basket is built around that pathway, adapted from the Navajo creation story.

Wayne’s nephew, Irving Tsotsie, painted this slice of the history of the People. The original hangs in the Storyteller Museum.

Manuelito was a war chief of the Dine people in the time of the Long Walk; he rallied the People against the United States military. Sadly, he died in 1893 from measles complicated by pneumonia and alcoholism.

I wanted to see where the Legendary Lieutenant worked so I drove to Center of the World, Window Rock, on top of the Defiance Plateau. Also called the Perforated Rock, Tseghshoodzani is part of the Navajo Water Way Ceremony as one of the four places where medicine men take the traditional woven water jugs to get water for the rainfall ceremony.

Jim Chee is the other principal detective in Mr. Hillerman’s novels of crime on the Reservation. Chee’s most important (and final) romance is with Bernadette Manuelito, a full-blooded Navajo and also a member of the Tribal Police.

I found NOSHA, Navajo EPA, and Navajo United Way. And I stopped in at the Dispatch and Records Office of the Navajo Nation Police Department. The NNPD is scattered among many trailers at NDOJ; Criminal Investigations was in practically the next trailer.

NNPD officers are cross-commissioned with Arizona State Police so the agencies can work together and have arrest powers across the state, Sergeant E. Garcia told me. Currently, there are 210 sworn police officers, 28 criminal investigators, and about an equal number of civilian support staff. Each officer patrols 70-80 square miles of reservation land in seven districts: Chinle, Crownpoint, Dilkon, Kayenta, Shiprock, Tuba City, and Window Rock. The rumor in Window Rock is that all of that office will be consolidated in a new building soon.

The P.D. was very nice. They let me out.

I found the Navajo Nation Museum and Library, the Navajo Nation Zoological and Botanical Park, and the Navajo Nation Code Talkers World War II memorial all in Window Rock. The memorial is at the foot of the in a lovely park.

The Zoo is “the only Native American owned-and-operated Zoo in the Country.” It gets over 40,000 visitors each year.

I’ve been chasing golden eagles in North Puffin where sightings are rare indeed (we have some that “fly through” but none that are building homes. Called “Atsashzhiin” in the Navajo language, golden eagle is sacred and important in the Dine culture. The Zoo provides daily care for nine golden eagles as well as about 50 mammals, all identified in English and Navajo with descriptions linking the animals to the culture.

I left the 6,830 foot elevation of Window Rock and drove down down downhill, down past Snowflake and Bear Flat, through the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest, almost a mile downhill toward Paradise Valley and some days off from traveling.